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>I don't think I've seen such a clear shift in public opinion so fast before Its not about public opinion, but rather data sovereignty requirements. Certain ty

by weberer 5mo ago

>I don't think I've seen such a clear shift in public opinion so fast before Its not about public opinion, but rather data sovereignty requirements. Certain types of data must be processed within servers located in the EU, regardless of where the company's HQ is. That's why you see most SaaS platforms nowadays offer a EU-only version.

riccardomc 5mo ago
It is definitely also about public opinion and it is going to be translated into laws soon enough (i.e. governments mandate data sovereignty). Recent erratic policies are having a profound effect on perception of US companies. It has been brewing for a while. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/02/27/is-overreliance-on-us-big-tech-a-threat-to-europe-the-netherlands-may-soon-find-out https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/02/27/is-overreliance-on-...
- weberer 5mo ago
  >it is going to be translated into laws soon enough (i.e. governments mandate data sovereignty) The laws are already there. That's my point.
  - close04 5mo ago
    There are no laws that force companies to store all (generic) data in Europe. If there were then the companies asking about migrations just now would already be in breach. You’re probably thinking of PII (GDPR/EUDPR) and even there there are plenty of loopholes, creative interpretations, and “privacy shields”. The push for sovereignty doesn’t just come from regulators, it comes from the companies themselves who lost trust in the US, and also from European providers who jumped on the opportunity to make a killing.
    - tpm 5mo ago
      Not generic data, no. But there are laws for government data afaik.
  - toyg 5mo ago
    His point is that those laws were basically ignored, until now. The conversation started all the way back, with the Patriot Act, but until now the dynamic was roughly: politicians write lofty laws that pay lip service to data sovereignty, then add enough loopholes so that nothing has to change in practice, and nobody really cares. Now people do care, and they don't want to use those loopholes. It's pretty obvious why things have changed.
englishrookie 5mo ago
Well, there are also noises about the SaaS company preferably not being American. Apparently there's a US law that compels US companies to divulge data on their users even if the data is hosted outside of the US. (I'm not sure this wouldn't happen anyway, without such a law.)
- tracker1 5mo ago
  Most nations can coerce information from corporate entities within their nation, even information that corporation holds outside said country. To what extents that coercion can hold will of course vary by local laws, customs and the people in charge. The US has a fairly large media footprint, not to mention it's actual physical size and outsized influence even then. So it is more covered and visible. Inside the US, the biggest concerns similarly come with China, which I consider a bigger risk. For better or worse, if you're inside the US, you're probably better off holding as much of your presence as you can inside the US as EU requirements can actually be more harmful than helpful in terms of compliance. There are also certain protections and resistance you can take to less than formal (judicial warrant) requests. Only because if you hold an online presence in the EU, and are forced to violate EU laws, then you're in trouble on both sides. I would assume similar in most cases, though the EU confederation is something I'm far less familiar with where national laws and EU laws conflict, etc. I'm more familiar with US state to federal structures.
  - doikor 5mo ago
    > where national laws and EU laws conflict EU doesn’t really have laws just directives and regulations it excepts every individual member to implement. Sometimes there are disputes on the implementations that are then fought over in the eu courts but if the member county really doesn’t want to implement or follow them there really isn’t much outside of withholding funds eu can do. (For example see Hungary under Orban) EU just doesn’t have the monopoly of violence like the federal government effective has in the US to enforce its will on the member states with force if necessary. EU quite literally doesn’t have a police or military force at all.
    - 5mo ago
dsl 5mo ago
Which is just wildly backwards. It is the same mindset of the cyberpunk "privacy advocates" of the early 2000s, move your stuff to Sealand or Switzerland. The fundamental flaw with this plan is if your fear is genuinely of the United States, your data is far more protected inside the US. The intelligence community has no restrictions operating on foreign networks and servers. Rather than go to a FISA court for approval, we just hack your box and take your data. Or ask a European intelligence service to use the much more lax laws to compel its disclosure. Yes, data collection happens on US soil. But ask anyone who has worked on the inside how much of a pain it is to view or process USPER data.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  The fear is not "NSA is snooping on our customer data", it's "Trump has a beef with our premiere minister/president, and Jeff Bezos accepted Trumps request to turn off AWS from them" that's the fear. We're far beyond the default assumption that NSA snoops on absolutely everything, and more about protection ourselves from trade wars, tariffs and similar blockages as what Microsoft did with the ICC.
  - dsl 5mo ago
    Compelling Microsoft to turn off your Office 365 at least requires Microsoft to be complicit. Sovereign infrastructure didn't protect Venezuela or Iran.
    - jurgenburgen 5mo ago
      > Sovereign infrastructure didn't protect Venezuela or Iran. Imagine if the control plane of the Shahed drones were hosted on AWS. What are you even talking about?
    - player1234 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - MadxX79 5mo ago
      Karım Kahn at the International Criminal Court would like a word about that.
garaetjjte 5mo ago
I remember when iCloud arrangements required by China was seen as draconian. Now it seems we're not far from people cheering for such laws elsewhere...
- deaux 5mo ago
  The people calling those draconian had always been very naive - and 99% of them American, as such incentivized to take that stance. It was the right thing to do since day 1 and the people with more of a long-term vision outside the US have always been advocating for such things. While China is the most extreme, there are other countries which have also understood this importance of sovereignty and been smart enough to at least demand/construct meaningful degrees of it. Mostly in Asia and the Middle East. Not a single EU country was among them, which is why they're now scrambling.
ftmootnomoat 5mo ago
It is highly correlated to Trump, who has threatened to invade denmark not too long ago.
- Ruby728 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- Ruby728 5mo ago
  [flagged]
eowln 5mo ago
Exactly. I know of many public grants that you can’t get if you aren’t doing everything in the EU, and so many companies in the EU would cease to exist without these handouts. It’s not something that the business owners want to do, but they are being forced to from above.
crote 5mo ago
And then you've got a country like the US introducing the CLOUD Act, which "allow federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil." In other words: physical location isn't enough, the company's HQ being in the US is in itself already a massive risk. The big American cloud companies are trying to get around this by offering their services via "independent" EU entities who aren't owned by the US company but still offer the exact same stack, but I bet most customers are just as unimpressed as I imagine US law enforcement is going to be.
- Longlius 5mo ago
  You mean like EU Chat Control?
  - swiftcoder 5mo ago
    Just because one government tried to do a fascism, doesn't mean we should excuse all the others
    - tempaccountabcd 5mo ago
      [dead]
  - GJim 5mo ago
    Mate, if 'whataboutism' is your only defence, you are in a desperate place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
bcye 5mo ago
I disagree, enforcement on data laws in the EU is extremely lacklustre.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  Compared to what other enforcements of any data laws?

by weberer 5mo ago

riccardomc 5mo ago

It is definitely also about public opinion and it is going to be translated into laws soon enough (i.e. governments mandate data sovereignty). Recent erratic policies are having a profound effect on perception of US companies. It has been brewing for a while. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/02/27/is-overreliance-on-us-big-tech-a-threat-to-europe-the-netherlands-may-soon-find-out https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/02/27/is-overreliance-on-...

weberer 5mo ago
>it is going to be translated into laws soon enough (i.e. governments mandate data sovereignty) The laws are already there. That's my point.
- close04 5mo ago
  There are no laws that force companies to store all (generic) data in Europe. If there were then the companies asking about migrations just now would already be in breach. You’re probably thinking of PII (GDPR/EUDPR) and even there there are plenty of loopholes, creative interpretations, and “privacy shields”. The push for sovereignty doesn’t just come from regulators, it comes from the companies themselves who lost trust in the US, and also from European providers who jumped on the opportunity to make a killing.
  - tpm 5mo ago
    Not generic data, no. But there are laws for government data afaik.
- toyg 5mo ago
  His point is that those laws were basically ignored, until now. The conversation started all the way back, with the Patriot Act, but until now the dynamic was roughly: politicians write lofty laws that pay lip service to data sovereignty, then add enough loopholes so that nothing has to change in practice, and nobody really cares. Now people do care, and they don't want to use those loopholes. It's pretty obvious why things have changed.

englishrookie 5mo ago

Well, there are also noises about the SaaS company preferably not being American. Apparently there's a US law that compels US companies to divulge data on their users even if the data is hosted outside of the US. (I'm not sure this wouldn't happen anyway, without such a law.)

tracker1 5mo ago
Most nations can coerce information from corporate entities within their nation, even information that corporation holds outside said country. To what extents that coercion can hold will of course vary by local laws, customs and the people in charge. The US has a fairly large media footprint, not to mention it's actual physical size and outsized influence even then. So it is more covered and visible. Inside the US, the biggest concerns similarly come with China, which I consider a bigger risk. For better or worse, if you're inside the US, you're probably better off holding as much of your presence as you can inside the US as EU requirements can actually be more harmful than helpful in terms of compliance. There are also certain protections and resistance you can take to less than formal (judicial warrant) requests. Only because if you hold an online presence in the EU, and are forced to violate EU laws, then you're in trouble on both sides. I would assume similar in most cases, though the EU confederation is something I'm far less familiar with where national laws and EU laws conflict, etc. I'm more familiar with US state to federal structures.
- doikor 5mo ago
  > where national laws and EU laws conflict EU doesn’t really have laws just directives and regulations it excepts every individual member to implement. Sometimes there are disputes on the implementations that are then fought over in the eu courts but if the member county really doesn’t want to implement or follow them there really isn’t much outside of withholding funds eu can do. (For example see Hungary under Orban) EU just doesn’t have the monopoly of violence like the federal government effective has in the US to enforce its will on the member states with force if necessary. EU quite literally doesn’t have a police or military force at all.
  - 5mo ago

dsl 5mo ago

Which is just wildly backwards. It is the same mindset of the cyberpunk "privacy advocates" of the early 2000s, move your stuff to Sealand or Switzerland. The fundamental flaw with this plan is if your fear is genuinely of the United States, your data is far more protected inside the US. The intelligence community has no restrictions operating on foreign networks and servers. Rather than go to a FISA court for approval, we just hack your box and take your data. Or ask a European intelligence service to use the much more lax laws to compel its disclosure. Yes, data collection happens on US soil. But ask anyone who has worked on the inside how much of a pain it is to view or process USPER data.

embedding-shape 5mo ago
The fear is not "NSA is snooping on our customer data", it's "Trump has a beef with our premiere minister/president, and Jeff Bezos accepted Trumps request to turn off AWS from them" that's the fear. We're far beyond the default assumption that NSA snoops on absolutely everything, and more about protection ourselves from trade wars, tariffs and similar blockages as what Microsoft did with the ICC.
- dsl 5mo ago
  Compelling Microsoft to turn off your Office 365 at least requires Microsoft to be complicit. Sovereign infrastructure didn't protect Venezuela or Iran.
  - jurgenburgen 5mo ago
    > Sovereign infrastructure didn't protect Venezuela or Iran. Imagine if the control plane of the Shahed drones were hosted on AWS. What are you even talking about?
  - player1234 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - MadxX79 5mo ago
    Karım Kahn at the International Criminal Court would like a word about that.

garaetjjte 5mo ago

I remember when iCloud arrangements required by China was seen as draconian. Now it seems we're not far from people cheering for such laws elsewhere...

deaux 5mo ago
The people calling those draconian had always been very naive - and 99% of them American, as such incentivized to take that stance. It was the right thing to do since day 1 and the people with more of a long-term vision outside the US have always been advocating for such things. While China is the most extreme, there are other countries which have also understood this importance of sovereignty and been smart enough to at least demand/construct meaningful degrees of it. Mostly in Asia and the Middle East. Not a single EU country was among them, which is why they're now scrambling.

ftmootnomoat 5mo ago

It is highly correlated to Trump, who has threatened to invade denmark not too long ago.

Ruby728 5mo ago
[flagged]
Ruby728 5mo ago
[flagged]

eowln 5mo ago

Exactly. I know of many public grants that you can’t get if you aren’t doing everything in the EU, and so many companies in the EU would cease to exist without these handouts. It’s not something that the business owners want to do, but they are being forced to from above.

crote 5mo ago

And then you've got a country like the US introducing the CLOUD Act, which "allow federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil." In other words: physical location isn't enough, the company's HQ being in the US is in itself already a massive risk. The big American cloud companies are trying to get around this by offering their services via "independent" EU entities who aren't owned by the US company but still offer the exact same stack, but I bet most customers are just as unimpressed as I imagine US law enforcement is going to be.

Longlius 5mo ago
You mean like EU Chat Control?
- swiftcoder 5mo ago
  Just because one government tried to do a fascism, doesn't mean we should excuse all the others
  - tempaccountabcd 5mo ago
    [dead]
- GJim 5mo ago
  Mate, if 'whataboutism' is your only defence, you are in a desperate place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

bcye 5mo ago

I disagree, enforcement on data laws in the EU is extremely lacklustre.

embedding-shape 5mo ago
Compared to what other enforcements of any data laws?